Chris joined Hanna IP in 2018 as a trainee patent attorney after spending three years as a patent examiner at the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO). While at the IPO, Chris examined applications relating to electrical and computing technologies, gaining significant experience of the UK excluded subject matter tests. Chris graduated with a first-class honours degree in physics from the University of Bath in 2008 and gained his PhD in physics in 2012 from the University of Bristol.

During his research career Chris published a number of papers on high temperature superconductivity and charge ordering in iron- and copper-based superconductors, as well as spin density wave phases in quantum meta-magnetic systems.